At the moment I am thinking about the difference between knowledge and skill. One can know how to paint without knowing what the paint is made of or where it comes from. One can write about the nature of poetics without writing any poetics himself, Aristotle was such a man. Euripides never wrote about the nature of drama, he simply wrote drama. Which is nobler?

"What do you know about trigonometry? Without trigonometry there would be no engineering."

"Without lamps there'd be no light."

"Alright, so no one is better than the other."

I'm disillusioned with school. I feel so close, yet so far away. I am here to learn, and I feel like I'm learning. I am learning. I am growing as a person. Yet, at the same time, scholastically, by required social constructs, I am not succeeding. As a student, personally, I feel I am without blemish, I am learning constantly, finding new and interesting ways to apply my knowledge, finding new challenges. As a student, traditionally, and by tradition I mean the standard ways in which one shows what one has gained and learned (ie. projects, papers, finals), I am uninterested and unmotivated. I have fallen into a trap that I believe has been unintentionally laid. I know I am not the first to say, "Look, I can to this and I know this but what you are asking me to do is not learning, is not knowledge, is not wisdom. What you are asking me is drudgery, it seems gray and mediocre. What you are asking me does not prove what I have learned, nor does it prove your ability to teach, what is proves is our ability to subject ourselves to an objective standard." The problem is that I don't fundamentally disagree with objective standards, I don't believe that the man is trying to keep me down, that the system is defunct and needs to be destroyed and rebuilt. I don't. The system, for the most part is sound. This system is helping me learn, is creating a thinking, knowledgeable individual. It's also creating stresses over petty and insignificant matters. I don't have a suggestion for a solution, so my criticism can only reach a certain point before it approaches cynicism. I'm disillusioned with the system because I can't do everything I wish to. Which, I'm sure, is some sort of projection. At the same time I am angry at myself, not only for my weakness in being unable to hold this aloft, but also with not realizing before I attempted to lift it that it was too heavy. Rand would tell Atlas to shrug, but is this what she meant? I doubt it. But some part of me is whispering yes, yes it is. It's telling me that, as an autonomous and free-thinking individual I have the ability to condemn this system if it is not providing me with what I desire. Howard Rowark was ejected from school. Howard Rowark was also an unfeeling demi-god of architecture. I'm impressive, of course, but I doubt am wholly similar. My paradigm is shifting, obviously, where I can't quite say.

Education is good. Formal education is also good, and important, and necessary, to a point. And where is that point? Where does one say I have been taught enough that I now know how to teach myself? One always learns from others, man is not an island. How long does one remain in the formal position of student? Wholly and completely student. When does one become teacher, or practitioner? It's an individual journey, I know there are no hard and fast absolutes in this now happy, now sad, now quick, now slow adventure of life. Even if there are no answers there should still be questions. It is the journey for the sand. In the end, is it the sand that you really want? Or was it just the thought of the sand that you needed to take that first step out your front door? If you get immersed in the journey and forget the sand, or choose to let it go, have you wondered off the path? Are you lost at that point? Or is that wisdom and enlightenment? If you obtain the sand, with all of the knowledge of the journey, and return, then what? Does the sand sit on the mantle piece, reminding you of all you have learned? Does it gain its value when it's given as a gift, to remind someone else of a path they never walked down? So are we constantly waiting for the gift of someone else's sand? Of course I cannot accept that, the individual and the personal means and reasons always reign supreme in my mind. It is my journey and my sand that I am most interested in, what others do may be used as a guide, perhaps, and comparison, and thank you for your sand, I will keep it on my mantle piece and think of you when I look at it, but if you excuse me, I have my own ocean to find and contemplate.

Robert Frost took the road less traveled by. He said unto me, "And that made all the difference." But what is the difference there? Difference is not always good. Of course total homogony is akin to stagnation and obviously bad. But, at the same time, difference for difference's sake and rebellion for rebellion's sake is worthless. Simply because that which exists is not utopia does not mean it will be found by attempting to destroy it at every turn. Destruction and complete chaos are the intellectual womb from which dystopia is born. It seems readily and obviously apparent that the flaw is internal, within myself. Yet I see, acknowledge, the internal flaw within myself, accept that and view its meaning. And I find there is something else, something somewhere fundamental, with this process that also aggravates me. Perhaps this is part of some other aspect of the self, perhaps Freud is correct. Perhaps not. I believe that youth, in its very nature, rebels. I believe myself a youth. Perhaps it is my impetuous, unsettled nature. Time will tell, perhaps healing all wounds, or just perhaps dulling the mind to the point that it can no longer remember pain. I feel like I'm walking in a dense fog, in a place I've never known. I don't feel alone, or unique in anyway, but somewhat isolated.

Do I value skill above knowledge? Does not skill come from knowledge? Is all knowledge useful? Is all action, however well conceived, just the sum of its motivation? Where are intentions without action? Where is the subtle nature of life that cannot be quantified? Am I looking for excuses? Am I just weary? It is the journey, answerless questions are worth asking. Maybe there are different types of sand. I know I want a change. What I'm wondering now is how much.

Still sick. Finished my first show in Rockford yesterday. I was the house LD for Brenda Lee. I walked an amazing line between being the new guy and being a crew head. All in all, it worked out just fine with me. I'm happy when I'm working and I'm happy with the work I do. School, on the other hand, is somewhat different.

You only live once, you have the rest of your life to fail.
The Honkey Dance made an appearance tonight. I jumped around on my bad foot, my head all full of a cold, didn't mind it one bit. I feel a lot of things, very few of which I think I could articulate even if I wasn't sick. I want stability, and I want chaos. I want both things, at different times, and at the same time. I guess I want to be confident in my insecurity. I feel that the world is fluid, yet I believe that there have to be absolutes. I believe I like women too much, or at least think about them too much. Some women specifically more than others. I feel full of love and fear. I'd say I'm living on the edge if I could feel like I could fall, but I can't believe that I can look down, that there is a down. There's nothing out there but the sky and the wind in my hair.

I feel like a little kid playing in the sand. Sometimes I feel like building huge castles by the shore, hoping secretly that the tide will come and wash them away, then I can claim I didn't know and I didn't mean it. Or I get impatient and I want to just knock them down on my own, so I can build again. I want to keep building, always building. I usually don't want to wait until one castle is done before I begin on another one.

It's amazing what a jackass I become when I start feeling good. No wonder I run myself into the ground, it's the only way to get me to avoid doing stupid things. Late night lighting seems to be the only way to do it.

Five pills and a nature valley granola bar for breakfast. Hey, at least I'm eating.

The days are just getting longer. The end is near, I know, I know, but I feel like I'm done right now. I can't hear myself screaming, I can't see past tomorrow.

I have been doing a little bit of reading about this past summer and I have this feeling that the feeling I'm feeling isn't a new one. It's hard to remember pain; it's even hard to remember adversity. You remember there was pain, or that there was adversity, but nothing about how it actually felt.

It's amazing what a difference a day makes. It's amazing how good I can feel when my body is rested, even when I only got four hours of sleep last night.

The next time someone tells you pain isn't funny, you be sure to think of this.

Yesterday, the whole day, I was wearing one of my socks inside out. It's amazing that could happen, considering how obsessive I am about my socks.

Every relationship with have, with all people, are relationships of convenience. Why then should we be expected to continue with inconvenient ones? The only work that is ever done on a relationship is to make it more convenient. It is depressing and liberating to be eating alone.

I went home the past two days. I guess three days, I lingered on today, like a bad penny, talking to people and trying to find a reason to want to leave. I returned to a dinner that was waiting for me with people I tried very hard to be glad to see and a party that I tried very hard to want to be at. This place where I live depresses me. I feel like I'm paying some sort of price, like I made some deal when I wasn't paying attention.

Happy birthday, grace sterna!

I had a dream last night that I was in Isreal, shopping in a shopping mall. For some reason I came upon a porn store, right there in the mall. I was shocked, porn in Isreal? A local man told me about a rather risqué display at another mall. I couldn't believe the amount of this they would allow publicly. He told me, "It's like a painting. I don't approve of it, but I don't want to take away their abality to paint."

Come and see me. Come and kick down the door and find me in the corner that I will run to. Come and kick me around until I don't know which way is up. I have lost the path, come and show me the way back. Come and absolve me. Come and see me.

Thank you, Chris, for telling me that I should stay. Thank you, Mili, for giving me some of your food and your music. When I doubt the world around me, the value of the breath within my lungs, you remind me. You show this man who tries so valiantly, so pitifully, to become an island the meaning of friendship.

What is it with girls and drawing smiley faces and flowers and hearts and all sorts of other cute things? And what is it about me that is really attracted to these doodles?

I just got off of the phone with Emily. I believe it has confirmed a notion that I've had for a bit. That is that you don't call someone if you don't have anything to say. People that you aren't romantically involved with aren't interested in hearing about your day on the phone. They have other things to be doing, people right there in the room with them. At some point and time conversations stopped being a cause in and of itself.

So after a rather interesting day yesterday, the high points being getting an hour and a half of sleep, showering at someone else's place, finding out that the Homeland Security bill scares my political science professor, reading a manifesto in my theatre history class, running into Tessa Summers (of U-High fame) at work last night, sleeping during the show while people put tape on my hat and finally going to bed around six in the morning. I set my alarm to wake me up around noon, and when it did I was suprised, I couldn't (still can't) believe it's this late in the day. I was out cold. Now it's one more class before the weekend. "So give me one for my baby and one more for the road."

It's always before something happens, or after it ends, that you think of everything you want to say. Never during, never during.

Lecture classes are bad news. It always happens they you just don't want to go. I mean, you're so random and anonymous.

If you say it's opposite day when it is opposite day that means it's not opposite day, right?

My printer sounds sick. Which isn't the best, I don't believe. I've been thinking about investing in a new scanner for the portfolio.

I've been looking though my photo albums a lot recently. The main motivation has been this page, actually, because I'm skimming over my past to find images like this one to use in a comic or maybe even this one. What I'm looking for, I guess, is a reason. I mean I love these photographs, and I'm a fan (read: fancier, not fanatic) of photography. I do thoughly enjoy it. But going back in these photo albums, even the ones from my freshman year of college here, I look like a baby. I mean, I still look like a baby, I get my hair cut, a shave, and bam, I'm tweleve again. What I'm getting at, though, is that I feel so disconnected with them. Maybe it's because I've taken so many, and I have so many albums put up on my wall, but most of the shots I'm seeing are of theatre things that I'm taking pictures of. Over half of my pictures from this summer are from the shows, why? Well, because I felt like taking pictures at photo call. It was all very nice. The connection between who I see in these images and who I see in the mirror is fading. My past, while I remember it, and know that it has, in someway, made me who I am today, I can't help but feel less than responsible for it. This has to be post modernism kicking in. I see these people from my past and I'm attatching current values to the images. If I'm happy with someone then I look at this picture and feel happy about them. If I'm longing for someone I look at a picture and am unable to recall the emotions of the time, remember that when the picture was taken I was with them, but rather I feel the longing more sharply. I do recall that this did not used to be the case. Before the image would take me away, transport me to another time and another place. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I have been observing it, and felt the need to note it. These feelings, of course, could also be coming from the feelings of drowning in my current social and educational situation. I feel so trapped in the present that I'm unable to empathise with the past. These feelings happen more often when I wake up and go into my day right from the moment I awake.

Laura Tennal:
The Awful Truth

I really like the page, I think it's working out pretty well. made a couple of additions today, which is rockin' awsome. Went on a crazy adventure in DeKalb today, which was also interesting. Bought some candy canes, I guess it's the season.

I just got off the phone with Emily. I don't think there are words for how much I miss seeing her everyday.

There's nothing in this world quite like waking up.

"I hate it when you smoke."

I went to class at 9:30am yesterday. When I was done with class I went to work. When work was over I took a dinner break, then did some homework and then went to a meeting that ended around ten in the evening. Around eleven that evening, when I was falling asleep, I felt guilty becaues I felt I hadn't done enough with my day. This is bad news.

Conclusions:
1) When your body has been abused it really enjoys a reprieve.
2) When your body gets a reprieve it goes for it, all out, to the edge and back again.
3) Just because it's two in the morning doesn't mean that anyone gives a damn.
4) Once you taste the paradise of sleeping in, it's hard to get up at seven after going to bed at three.
5) "It happens to the best of us, I guess." -burndiscoburn

So I got an article in class today, written by Constance Hilliard, an assistant professor of history at the University of North Texas in Denton. It related to arranged marriages and the like, there was this gem of a sentence: "All too often, our relationships ... become predicated on that person continuing to be whom [sic] we imagine him or her to be in our self-created delusions."

I didn't draw it, I'm just posting it.

God, some days it just feels nice. I took the morning and the afternoon off. I've been sitting around my place all day thus far. I've gotten two assignments done, I'm on top of things for work, I've been working on the page somewhat and I did a little writing on a show that I'm working on. I feel beautiful.

"I'm on your side."
"You're on my side?"
"Yeah."
"What is my side, exactly?"
"I don't know, I just know I'd rather be on it than their side."

-Allison (thank you) & Stick

"Soon I will leave this place."
What the world means to me, I cannot say. What my life is, what it will become, I cannot know. All of my beautiful words are spinning in a sink, being washed away with the grime one picks up on their hands after working all day. I am tired of school. I'm just tired. The tragedy (and I am well aware of the hyperbole) is that I have to get up in the morning.

I had a dream about being a lighting designer last night.

We know it, we know with every breath we take, every moment of sleep that we don't get. We know that we don't have the time we should have. We feel it in our bones and in our hearts. We've given ourselves to something that we refuse to give any less to. And because we're not there doesn't mean that we don't care, we do, oh we do, more than you could ever imagine. But we have faith, as misplaced as it may be, but we have faith that when the show opens, when tech is over, that we'll have the chance to sit down for a moment and talk. And when you tell us, when you say that we don't have enough time, there is no defense, it's true. But we love you, we do, more than we could say even if we did have the time. So please, if you can, put your faith in us. Place it there and let it rest and grow, we will be there when all of the lights have gone out.

It takes a little bit of smugness to take your long, accusatory and all-too-human finger, point it in the face of God and say pridefully, "You don’t exist."

It's sad, at times, to think that I might actually have some free time, and some motivation, but my muse has fled. Fled far, far away, beyond my abality to reach her.

vasconia-forever.net went live today. For sure, for sure. w00t. I believe the offical relaunch though is going to be pushed back to the first of the year, to be done with the other page Bret's working on.

So the rum has been going though me. The main reason this causes comment is that it feels like I was drinking a week ago, and it was last night.

I am undone. grace broke up with me in the wee hours of this morning.

All that wanders is not lost.

So yesterday afternoon I get a call from Lucrecia informing me that the Kishwaukee board had been going on the fritz and that they had to run part of the show in work lights. I got in contact with her and she told me there was nothing I could do at the moment. I got in touch with Nadine who told me she had sent some people to rent another board. So I went to class and then after class made a couple more calls, went to pick up Mili and headed out to Kishwaukee. I got there around four thirty. Immediately I was working on getting the cues off of the Insight onto either the Insight 2 or Expression (it seemed Nadine had rented not one, but two backup boards). When this started to look unlikely I decided it was time to print off the cues. This we managed to do with a little bit of paper finesse, sometimes using the same sheet four times. Got on the phone with an ETC rep about transfering the cues and all kinds of fun stuff. When we finally got down to start typing everything I realized that that neither of these new boards were AMX compatible. Kishwaukee is an AMX house. So I sent Mili over to NIU to pick up an AMX to DMX converter from Corey. Once we got that over I realized we needed a DMX cable to make this work. It was about this time that Nadine decided to go with the house board. So we plug the house board in and have no control. Nothing. Not even a flicker. The show is supposed to go in twenty minutes. I think it's the AMX cable we have running from the board to the wall. I fly back to NIU, talk Corey into giving me a four-pin cable, then fly back to Kishwaukee, plug the thing in, and it works. This happens less than a minute before curtian. The show starts and I realize that sitting and watching it would have caused me a heartattack. So Mili and I went for some coffee, checked back in after the show, then went to a Halloween party dressed as lighting designers.

I don't really care how attractive it is to dress up like a bunny, it's really hard to respect someone that's wearing fishnets and exposing a great deal of skin to an Illinois winter.

I never seem to learn, boys and girls. I never seem to learn. It's always that a new project and more work always seems so exciting. I know I'm burnt and tired and compleatly worn out, but the point is I still want to work. I'm sure I'd dig myself to the other side of the world only to find that it's night there, and all I had to do was wait where I was. Knowing when to wait, something I haven't learned.

If it's not one thing then it's another.

"Failing you would be the last thing I'd want to do for you."
"Oh, is that so? And what is the first?"
"Falling for you."

It seems that any Saturday morning in which I'm at home and trying to sleep in and there's someone else in my place that someone has to knock on my door. This morning was the first time that someone I knew just happened to knock on my door. Wait, scratch that. Kellie had done it a couple Saturdays ago in which I was sick as a dog. But it happened not once this morning but twice. First was grace saying hi on her way to work and the second was Mili who I had not called to tell her the touch up call for Blithe Spirit had been moved to Sunday. I remember a couple of weeks ago my pattern had been to go, go, go all week and then crash until around three on Saturday. I guess a couple of Saturdays of getting up has broken that habit, and I go, go, go all week and still get up before noon on Saturday. What is sleep anyway? Who really needs it?

Well alright. The show yesterday was not quite as hellish as I was thinking it would be. It was an interesting day. We didn't really have the time to focus everything, or even close to everything. I, of course, found myself up on the ladder moving lights to the best of my quick abalites. Mili was introduced to the road crew as the house ME, which amused me, but she did it just fine. Apperently the road crew had a big crush on her, which is something I think I'm going to use in the future if I can. The show was The Scarlet Pimpernel and we had to stop it right in the middle of the first scene and start over because we couldn't get one of the pipes out. I'm see myself as a rather earthy manager, in so much as I try to work very closely with the crew. I can talk to the upper management as we as the road crew and Carrie with the Egyptian. It's a good job and I think I do it very well.

It's an interesting and exciting world.

The weekend has gone. What I think of it, it's hard to say. Blithe Spirit is going well. I think the issue with the PARs is a tell-tale sign that I'm a beginning designer. But you gotta take risks, the R90 is risk, those PARs are a risk. If you can't fuck up at a community college then where can you fuck up?
I spend a lot of time identifying myself with my work. I am my work. And when I fuck up in my work that means I fuck up, period. It means I am a fuck up. Right now I have too much work, and I'm not getting it all done, and sometimes I feel like a fuck up. I want to be beautiful. It seems I might be, it seems I could be. I have the whole world to say, and no words in which to say them with. "If only I could dance all this." If only there was a dance, full of memories and dreams and broken heels. Full of something my body could say that my mouth never could. Full of life. I feel that way. Quietly full, right now. I feel not satisfied, but tired and hungry, and quietly full. I surely don't feel old, but I don't feel young either. I like to stare at my hands. The little cuts and the knuckles. The hairs and how each one lays in relation to another. I like to watch as my fingers type, or as they just sit still on the table. I feel good, and I feel bad. I feel alive. I don't want to chirp right now, I don't want to burn out or fade away. This isn't an ending or a beginning, it is just a night that follows a day that will be followed by another night. It is these moments that make up a life, that define a life.

I just heard on the radio, "this is the first apparent bombing in Israel in about two weeks." As if two weeks was a long, long time.

Mili was a trooper yesterday. We went into the Kish theatre space and there were some not-quite-union guys in there. I went to work on the front of house and Mili went to work on the stage. My crew was a couple of the local theatre-related people and Mili got the others. I hadn't quite planned it that way, and had I planned it, it wouldn't have turned out that way. She was taking some shit from them because of her penis-lacking status but onward she braved, and when they started doing some stuff just off on their own she went back there and took charge. She's a fabulous assistant and I hope that in the future I get the chance to assist her in something, repay the favor. She's a smart little goatslayer and I hope to keep in touch with her because I'd be more than interested to see which winding paths her life takes her down.

At times morning can come all too fast.

It seems that in my dreams Laura was living in DeKalb this whole past summer. This is really all I remember about my dream last night, except that when I think about it I know that I've dreamt it before. It's not a reoccurring dream, but a reoccurring event or circumstance, like there's some sort of definite history from dream to dream. It's eerily similar to how there's a definite history from day to day, where one event manages to continue to have happened, causing others around it. There are some that say life is but a dream.

I arived home this afternoon around four this evening. I've just finished eatting lunch, in front of me I have a half full glass of milk and an empty mug of hot cocco. I have places to be and things to do, but right now I'm letting the food sit, settle and enjoying the short rest.

Every life is a Tower of Babble. Every life a man builds up, brick upon brick, sometimes changing architectural style or building material. Sometimes destroying floor upon floor because he is not happy with the way it is turning out. But he is always building this tower trying to reach the sky. There are small crumbling, effected by time and distance, and the final divine smiting, death, which leaves Greek-like ruins, or less, nothing. These levels that I have been building were close to completion, but upon looking at them closely I have found that my contractor wasn't as good of a deal as I had hoped. He cut corners, somethings aren't quite square. More levels most likely wouldn't stand. I'm going to have to keep building some, just enough to make it safe to knock it down. God will wait for me, smiling smugly. God waits for everyone.

There are words, I'm sure, to express what I'm feeling now. Joy, despair, elation, revolution, urgency, exhaustion, pride, shame, fear, trepidation, comfort, peace, just to name a few. There's nothing like coming home to your place and knowing that someone is there waiting for you.

I have hope now, in some unseeable, unforeseeable, future. Some time when these days have come to an end and I have slept late into the afternoon for days upon end. I guess when I wasn't looking I lost all desire for the present. I can't imigine what I would do this evening if I didn't have hope.

I just got home to find my alarm was beeping. It had been set for 5:45pm (which explains why I woke up so late this morning). I remember thinking not too long ago that the thing had to automatically shut off at some point. I guess I was wrong on that point.

I would like very much for someone to reach out and touch me.

There are so many lego-shaped crunch berries in my cereal that there's barely any room for the Cap'n Crunch. Then again, on the front of the box "Crunch Berries" is about thirty times the size of "Cap'n Crunch," so what else should have expected?

"Today I write you, in spite of years of silence. You've cleaned up, found Jesus. Things are good, or so I hear. This bottle of Stevens awakens ancient feelings. Like father, step father, the son is drowning in the flood." At least I can't watch television at night.

I'm listening to Hard Candy by the Counting Crows and it's gotten me to thinking about this past summer. It's gotten me thinking about standing in the Tibbit's Opera House with cable and linesets all around me. It reminds me of Kelli O'Toole and hanging a show in silence and joy, just knowing what work has to be done, not having to talk about it and just doing it. It was beautiful. Whatever muck and mire I find my boots standing in this exact moment I can still look to my past and know that my future is aimed in the same direction.

As a rule, I like hang better than focus. Also, as a rule, when I'm inside I'd prefer to be warm rather than cold.

Lost my bag after work last night. Got up early this morning, one of the UPs had found it and turned it in. I went and retreived it. I was releived and exauasted. I got home, did a little reading and then passed out. Finally woke up around four or so this afternoon. Had a dream that I had made it back to Bloomington/Normal and kinda crashed a party. Steve was there doing some odd sensual touch thing with Rehan and some girl that I didn't know. I waved at him and he said something about it being a bad time to be at the party. I was hurt, offended and made a big scene and stormed off. I haven't seen Steve in a while, or even talked to him, come to think of it.

Computers without Microsoft Office are worthless.

Show upon show upon show. Worked on Late Night Catechism this afternoon. I have been a little less than proactive on that show. I'm sure it has something to do with Love's Fire and the other work that's going though my mind at the moment. Not to mention Blithe Spirit, which I had to miss a meeting today because of Late Night Catechism. I sent Mili out and she went. She's the most fabulous assistant ever. She just stopped by, I gave her some pizza, and we talked about what was going on with the show, what was told to her and all of that fun stuff. It's the best ever, the best. I'm excited about this show and I can't wait until I get some color chosen and get the hang in the air and everything. Excited. This is really my first chance to design with a full schedule. I’m all giddy, and it’s most likely because I haven’t slept too much the past two weeks.

Today is day last of technical rehearsals for Love's Fire. Tomorrow the show opens and my props master virginity will be at an end. So, all in all, the process has been somewhat enjoyable and somewhat harrowing. It was nothing I couldn't handle and I don't think I've even put in thirty hours on the project. Despite being a show made up of six vignettes the list of necessary things was light, and the only real special build was a pair of wings used by a character playing the archangel Michael, which, in retrospect, I could have easily given off to costumes, which would have most likely made them look better, but it's my cross to bear and I think they look rather nice. As I'm looking back though I'm trying to understand what this experience has thought me. It didn't light my world on fire like my first focus call did. I feel like I'm schlepping though this, but at the same time Kathy (the properties director here at NIU) had very few notes for me. I feel like a technician rather than a designer about this show, which is fine by me, because I don't think I have the time or the emotional stability at the moment to fully commit myself artistically to this production. I sound like some melodramatic artist there, don't I? I'm also relating to the stage manager rather well, which is a somewhat odd trend that I've been noticing in my life over the past few months.

The feeling of tired, the dirt on your hands and under your fingernails, the somewhat empty feeling that there's nothing pressing at the moment. I know exactly what I mean when I say I love working all day.

I remember when I was younger and I was not feeling well and didn't want to go to school my mother would tell me to give it "the ol' college try." I never really knew what that meant, exactly, except that I was supposed to suck it up and deal. It usually meant that I had to go to school when I didn't feel like it at all. Now I'm in college, sick, and I don't feel like going to school. Granted it's a Saturday, but I should leave my place, but I feel like ass. The ol' college try looks a lot like sitting down with a book and reading the day away.

I went and saw the Counting Crows this past Wendesday. It was a good time, I love me some Counting Crows. Live preformance is, after all, live preformance. I spent most of the time looking at what the lights were doing. I can't imigine what someone who didn't love the Crows would be doing, they rocked out pretty well, but they are the Counting Crows, and that means mellow.

I had a dream last night in which I was fighting with a guy that I know, he's a friend of mine, in so much as I can talk to him when I bump into him on the street, but we don't really hang out. I guess I was in high school or something. I had a locker and I had forgotten my combination to my lock. I asked one of my good friends what it was, and he explained it to me rather slowly. I thought it was somewhat insulting the manner in which he explained it to me, but then again, I was really confused when he gave me a fourth number. I don't recall dial locks having a fourth number. Now this guy I mentioned above, the almost-friend, was at his locker around the hall, and he got out a pen to write down my combination. I was not in the least cool with this. I only want really good friends to know how to get into my locker. I do remember thinking that there was really nothing in my locker worth taking, but it was the principal of the thing. I also had a big, iron monkey wrench in my locker for some reason that I thought about getting out of it and beating the shit out of him with it. I tried diplomacy first, which didn't work. I told him not to write it down and he insisted it had nothing to do with my locker combination. I just knew he was full of shit. So I punched him in the face. It's important to remember that in real life and in this dream, this guy is shorter than me, but a whole hell of a lot more stocky, he could easily beat the shit out of me. He's really taken aback by this punch. Not that the punch stunned him, just the fact that I did just punch him. I took advantage of this and shoved him down an aisle. Yeah, I guess this high school was at Wal-Mart or something, because it was an aisle full of furniture for sale. So I'm shoving him down a bit and a friend of mine tosses me a broom. Now I'm trying to use the handle to bludgeon him with, but the aisle is too cramped and I can't wield it properly. I end up jamming it between the aisle somehow, leave my friend to guard him, and return to my locker. There I get a brass knuckle out, slip it on my right hand, and return. I toss the broom out of the way and punch him in the face for real. This time the power of the blow stuns him. I knock him on the ground and just wail on his face Fight Club style. I do this until my rage is exhausted and I let him up. He looks pretty alright for just being beaten with some brass knuckles. He's alright enough that he can toss me over his shoulder and start to wail on me in a similar fashion. The reason no high school crowd had surrounded us was because there was some assembly that we had to attend. I mentioned this to him and he stopped for a moment, confused. I told him I'd also been drinking which mean that I was going to start feeling bad a lot quicker than he was. About this time Robert Schneider, my History of Theatre professor, arrives on the scene and pulls him off of me. I start to get a terrible pain in my stomach, I guess from the alcohol I had spoken of. Prof. Schneider takes him to one of the furniture displays in the store and lays him there, then returns for me and places me on two end tables that he moved together. At this point I'm developing a plan to tell any authority figure about how he started the fight. Then some girl shows up, being very concerned about me. I have no idea who she is. But I guess she cares very deeply about my health. I can't talk or move too much due to the pain in my stomach. Then my friends start arriving on boats. I guess this Wal-Mart had an indoor beach that doubles as a dock for small, personal sea craft. This assembly got out and they had boated back. It was odd. I remember someone had a sail boat, and I think it was Allison Hudson, and I know she was with a boy that I know in real life, but I think his face kept changing as I looked at him, this making me sicker, so I stopped. So now I had an audience for when I faced this authority figure. This was about the time I woke up and realized my stomach did actually hurt a bit. The real reason not a fight or drinking, but hunger. Go figure.

"All we're really waiting for is for something worth waiting for."

Sometimes it's not the best to be named Weckesser. Like when your bio teacher is calling out all of the names in a class in alphabetical order. And even more so when the paper that says Weckesser on it holds a failing grade. I used to think I was a good student. I'm an average student, at best.

So I managed to sleep the whole afternoon away. But during this time I had a dream. A dream in which I somehow found myself drinking a beer, and what's strange is that it tasted pretty good. So I kept drinking it, and drinking it and drinking it until it was all gone. Oh, did I mention I was driving at the time? Yeah, so the speed in which I consumed this beer made me drunk in so much as my vision was totally blurred and my reaction times slowed to almost nil. My cognitive thought processes were still working just fine. This was not the best. So I did the wise thing and pulled off the main road into some sleeply side road and stopped. I had a convertible that wasn't really a convertible, but one of the neighborhood dogs came up, he was a big dog and we became friends. I stated talking to him and I think he understood. There was another smaller dog, but he stayed out of my reach from inside the car. As I wasn't about to get out while drunk. It's dreams like that which make me pray that dreams are not prophetic.

Got an email from Swanson last night. He's going to be workin' on the blog thingie soon. He entitled the domain ambitiondrives.us, which I must say is goddamned cool. He's a good man, Bret Swanson, even if he did call me a fag in the email. That's the way he is, using this angry and inciting rhetoric because he's an angry and inciting individual. I'll take more of this non-PC talk around him because he doesn't concern him. I'll talk it around him, too, where I wouldn't around other people. Friendships are strange and wonderful things, as mysterious as god. Sometime I might end up rewriting or write a retraction of my prose piece dedicated to him. Maybe this page can do what I have been unable to for years. I do think we're driven. Kindred spirits or whatnot, forget it. I'm not even going to touch it, but I do think that Bret's driven and I do think that I'm driven, and I'm sure that the others that will use this page are also driven. We're an interesting lot and it'll be an interesting experiment.

When I was in high school the boys' bathrooms were set up in this rather odd manner. They had little walls between the stalls that went maybe up to my waist as I was standing. Then, at the end of these stalls they had the one enclosed stall. This, of course, was the handicapped stall. But, whenever I found myself needing to use the facilities I would find myself in the handicapped stall, hoping that none of the handicapped students would come rolling into the bathroom. When I broke my heel it was bad news, however I found that as I went into public restrooms they also had a handicapped stall and I felt justified in using it. It was as if all of the worry I had felt in high school with my pants around my ankles had been avenged. Now today, this very day, I walked into one of the restrooms in the Stevens Building (theatre building) here at NIU. This restroom has been undergoing some cosmetic work, I believe there is a story below about this very same restroom. Today I found a new addition, a gigantic handicapped stall. It was about two and a half times the size of the other stalls in the room. I looked at it for a moment, took a step towards it and thought to myself, "I'm not handicapped enough for that stall." I thought of Monty Python and smiled. Though I can't whistle or sing, so I think if I was ever nailed to a cross the only thing I could do is scream.

These dreams, these dreams that I have. I'm having them, and it is becoming a nightly thing so my joy at one individual dream is waning somewhat. I remember them in a way I think a shadow would see the world around him. Sometimes clear, but usually soft and indistinct. When I awake I focus on this life and this world, so much that whatever my adventures were in the night, they are forgotten the moment I rise, and only later do they return, like phantoms from beyond.

"I can't remember why I like this feeling, it always seems to let me down." -Gin Blossoms

I've turned my fans off! It's cold in here! Hip hip!

The sipping on the Capri Sun reminds me of so many days gone by, flooding me with not memories in so much as feelings of youth.

I saw Akira last night. I saw it on the big screen. Which, I have to say, is pretty cool. It's quite the film, very anime. There were two things that distracted me, the first was the DragonBall Z feel of the guy after he gained some power and the second was the friends turned enemies turned friends. The turning enemies part seemed a little contrived to me. The movie left me thinking, though, about government and power. About friendship and what it means. No real conclusions though, just a mixing stick stirring up the paint so it doesn't start to turn. I appreciated the complexities of the plot, it wasn't really a melodrama except that due to how many aspects were put into the film a couple of things necessarily got the short end of the stick. I would have really liked to have seen more of almost everything. I would have liked to have seen more of the Supreme Council and more of the bike gangs, even more of the military and how it worked with a system of checks and balances rather than one man in taking control. The mysteries of Akira, the character, was pretty well done. Reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop in subtlety in which we understand just enough of the situation to appreciate the gravity of it, but we don't have a full understanding to the point we can wholly judge for ourselves. It's that guess work, that mystery and wonder that I usually enjoy in a film (and in theatre, for that matter). Not knowing everything, but knowing enough to know it's important and letting the scene rise, as if on a cloud.

Dreams, dreams, dreams. Such dreams I had last night. I awoke feeling somewhat slimy and dirty. Sleep, though, sleep is good. I'd do well to banish the dreams that are not quite nightmares, but not really pleasent curiosities either. I'm happy enough with rest.

Life is so much more surreal when you're up in the middle of the night and not intoxicated. Being alone really helps with the feeling as well.

So you're in the bathroom, right? And there are two urinals where there used to be four, right? And there's this guy there. He's using one of the urinals, leaving the one right next to him open. Now, by all social norms when there are just two of you then you're supposed to take the urinal that's at least on step away from the other guy, it's just polite. But there is no other urinal. So you go up to the empty one and you know you're thinking the situation is pretty odd, and you're wondering if he's thinking the same thing. So then right before he turns away he says, "Didn't there used to be four of these here?" He, of course, had noticed as well. And he was, after all, thinking the same thing you were. Maybe we're not so different after all.

I like my lunch the way I like my women, warm and steamy.

I love my job.
It's terribly depressing to walk into an empty appartment that was supposed to have someone in it.

So this morning some guy stops by around quarter to seven in the AM. I get up, put some pants on and open the door. It's some guy in a white t-shirt and a walkman of some sort. He says to me, "Hey, is Chris around? Chris has cigarettes."

"Um, no. Sorry. Chris doesn't live here."

"Oh. Well. You got any cigarettes?"

"No, sorry."

And then he leaves. What the hell, man?

There's no amount of halted walking that will stop your shadow from following you home. It's always there, reminding you of the light that you so love to bask in.

I think I had a dream last night in which someone (who might have been me) was singing some show tune about the difference between ambition and other sorts of dreams. Or something like that. It was a song about semantics, maybe it was desires and dreams. The semantics of a dream and some other sort of goal that one is aiming for. Or perhaps how dreams are just dreams and how most people just lock them up and put them aside. It was an interesting song, and I really wish I could remember even a spattering of the lyrics.

I feel so alone, so alone and lonely. This goddamn work, I feel like it will always be there, like a wall. If I could only get it done.

"He lost his leg in Dallas, he was dancin' with the train."
It's one thing to go crazy on the train, but wholly another to go crazy with the train. So I thought it would get in my way and I raced it across the tracks. I won, of course, I wouldn't be typing this if I had lost. In the end though, all I did was tire myself out needlessly. Such though, could be a metaphor for life. Not just my life, all life. That doesn't depress me, either, I find it more fascinating.

Happy Birthday to Alison!
Oh my, oh my, oh my. Week one: Complete. I'm tired. I'm more than tired, I'm weary. I feel good, though, really good. I think I'm ready for this. I think it's going to be a long and hard road that I'll be walking, but I think I'll make it scratched and bruised but matured and knowledgeable on the other side.

Dawn comes too early. Dark comes too early. Dusk last night was a slow and simple process, overtaking me beyond my ability to comprehend even as I tried to pay attention. It was nice, work is, after all, somewhat relaxing when you're just waiting for the band to finish playing. It's good money on those nights. The problem, of course, is that despite the fact that I do need the money, and I do like the work, I am in school. Stay in school, kids, it all hinges on that.

Who the fuck ships a drafting table without legs? I mean, seriously.

Alright, now it's really one thing to play your music so goddamned loud that I can hear it though my floor, but it's totally another thing to play your music so goddamned loud I can hear lyrics like, "Who is that girl that fucks crazy niggers?" I'm not down. I'm not cool with that. Goddamn. Of course, though, if I call the cops, and I am living in DeKalb, and I say, "Hey, this guy is playing racist music and I want you to tell him to stop," the police will laugh at me because they are all racists themselves. I mean, of course we know that, we might be in college but that doesn't mean we're totally ignorant of the shit that's going on around us. Oh yeah, we know. I figure maybe I should try and meet the guy first before I call the cops on him. That would most likely be the best solution.

Note about the above:
You know, I was talking and I got to realizing that it's really totally okay for him to be playing that sort of music if he was black. I mean, I know he's not black, I've been told by two people that I'm inclined to believe that he's totally white trash, but if he was black it's fine, beyond fine, for him to play music with lyrics like that. Why that is I can't say, I can't even begin to say.

So the question I pose at this early hour before I go to bed is this: Given the option to see a concert filled with music would you rather go with someone who can listen to the music and love and understand it as much as you do or someone who can listen to the music and never understand it but love you as much as you love it?

So this morning as I was slapping my alarm for a couple more minutes of sleep I kept having all of these strange dreams. The last of which, just as I feel into a dream state I looked around and thought loudly, "Why the fuck am I driving?" and then promply threw myself into consciousness. It hit me like a baseball bat to the face. The like has not happened to me before. Perhaps it was lucid dream, I guess I knew I was dreaming and was not cool with it at all. There was also something about my last Tibbit's check being held for some reason. It's not of course, thankfully. Which means, if all goes well, I'll pay rent today.

I found my ring. Hip hip!
My god, my god, what a day. And it's not over, not by a long shot.

Pippin and Weezer? What blissful, gorgeous angel is this that sings to me in the familiar and the strange, shaking me to the very core?

Third year in a row in which I didn't go to the DeKalb corn fest. Three cheers. Hip hip!
First day of classes at eight in the morning. Three cheers... oh, wait. Nevermind.

It's amazing how you can have a whole world to say to one person, just words upon words upon words. Things meaningless and things important. Then a moment later, with another person which whom you have many things of importance to talk about, no words come, no thoughts prevail. Such is one of the mysteries of life, and love, I believe.

Sometime today, when I wasn't looking, it became night. And while that was going on I became one of those people that talk on their cell phones while they're driving. I also became one of those people whose phones go off while they're in the computer lab, not just once but twice. I'm rather disappointed in myself.

I had a dream last night. I was stranded on this deserted island, which wasn't really deserted because there were people that kept coming to watch us. It was like we were a tourist attraction. I had been shot in the stomach, twice, but for some reason could manage to go on living so long as I did not surrender myself to death. There were three of us there, that were stranded, and we were waiting for something. There was a boy and a girl with me, for some reason I think they're people I know from real life, but I can't remember who. We were also in an apartment. So eventually this thing happened, whatever it was, and we were able to leave. This struck me as somewhat odd, because all we did was get up and walk out. I myself was somewhat doubled over due to the bullet wounds in my mid-section. I ended up living in an apartment with a bedroom and Jericho (Bret's old dog). Jericho tried to jump up on me, but I told him he couldn't on account of the bullets that for some reason I still had not removed. The boy and the girl that were stranded with me ended up in an apartment rather similar to the one I have now right next door. And these apartments were above Babbit's Books in downtown Normal where I had my first place oh so many years ago (it seems a lifetime). Needless to say, when I woke up I was confused. I was well, which was nice, and I also wondered what I was going to do with all of this space I had suddenly inherited. Luckily for me, of course, it was just a dream.